Latest / WoT Spoilers / To Require a Boon & A Knack - A Memory of Light ch5&6 - EP597

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To Require a Boon & A Knack - A Memory of Light ch5&6 - EP597 · WoT Spoilers

• 0:12
  Speaker 1: This is the Wheel of Time Spoilers Podcast. So today
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: we are doing chapters five and six because it very
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: much is another one of those the break in the
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: middle is just in the middle of a conversation, right?
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Concepts contained in these two chapters really go together. And
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: this is all about the dragon's piece. I mean, that's
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: really the central thesis of what we're here to talk
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: about is the dragon's piece and its contenders and its fallout.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: With a scene at the end, which is essentially the
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: on your left scene in Avengers Endgame with the portals
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: opening up, right?
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, also we have the return of Moraine and the
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: from 6,000 to 100,000 in 30 seconds cavalry charge. There's
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: a lot of cool stuff going on here for sure.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: It's very visually exciting. This is deeply Sanderson graphic awesomeness.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: And I mean, we're really kicking off the last battle here. Right.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: We're seeing, you know, I understand the beginning was certainly
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: the fight for Camelon and the fall of Camelon. But
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: now we actually get to see like the armies gathered
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: together to assault the Trollocs. We are seeing the first
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: real skirmish and real battle of the last battle. It's exciting.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: It's exciting.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, we've moved on from the first few opening
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: notes to now the snare drum is kicking in. And
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: it's like, oh boy, here we go. Here we go.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: There's just those first few bugle notes. Now the percussion
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: is coming in. Now the marching band is starting to
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: really kick up all the things. And it's exciting. So yeah,
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: we open. Oh, we have to say what the chapter
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: title is. Oh, this is a Rand read-in.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: Chapter five. To require a boon, which is the Avienda
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: boon that she requests of Rand, that get the Aiel.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: The inclusion of the Aiel into the dragon's piece.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And that's why we have the Aiel spear and shield, right?
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: Because the boon is related.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: Very appropriate.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: Randall Thor awoke and drew in a deep breath. He
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: slipped from the blankets in his tent, leaving Avienda slumbering there,
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: and threw on a robe. The air smelled wet. He
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: was reminded in passing of mornings during his youth, rising
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: before dawn to milk the cow, which would need milking
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: twice a day. Eyes closed, he remembered the sounds of Tam,
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: already up, cutting new fence posts in the barn. Lots
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: of fence posts lately.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what's up with that? Good fences make good neighbors?
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: Is that the idea?
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: Or only because of the boundary with the dark one?
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: Tam represents the rebuilding of the prison, and him checking
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: the fence posts is checking the seals. Okay, but he
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: still doesn't check the seals. Yeah.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: I kind of thought that happened to these chapters, but
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: it doesn't.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: Me too. And then he even hands them over and
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: doesn't look at them that closely. Yeah. Remembering the chilly air,
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: stomping his feet into his boots, washing his face with
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: water left to warm beside the stove. On any morning,
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: a farmer could open his door and look out on
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: a world that was still new. Crisp frost, the first
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: tentative calls of birds, sunlight breaking the horizon like the
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: morning yawn of the world. Rand stepped up to the
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: flaps of his tent and drew them back, nodding to Katerine,
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: a short, golden-haired maiden who was on guard. He looked
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: out on a world that was far from new. This
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: world was old and tired, like a peddler who'd been
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: to the spine of the world and back on foot.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: Tents crowded the field of Marilor, cook fires trailing pillars
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: of smoke toward the still dark morning sky. So, he
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: remembered a world new, he's in a world that's used.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: Katerine is, of course.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: A fan of the Wheel of Time?
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: Catherine is named for Catherine Walker, a fan of the
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: Wheel of Time.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: Figured, figured.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: And I think one of the most interesting parts in
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: this opening section is the description of the dragon as
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: one with the land, right? Here's this moment here. Rand
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: closed his eyes. He could feel the land itself like
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: a faint water bond. Beneath his feet, grubs crawl through
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: the soil, right? He can feel the roots of the
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: grasses spreading, seeking nutrients. And so this link with his
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: land the land I think is so important for everything
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: that he does from the growing of the trees, the,
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: the way he's able to sing to the way he's like,
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: I think even able to weave the threads of the
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: pattern later when he's fighting the dragon, the dark one.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: So question, um, When do you think this awareness kicks
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: in for him? Was it always there and he was
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: just too chaotic to notice it? Has this been there
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: since the beginning or is this something that he couldn't
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: even start to access or have awareness of until Zen Rand?
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: Certainly after Zen Rand, right, is he has full access
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: to it. That's the moment in which he gains full
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: access to it. Before then, I think there has to
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: be there was a feedback loop, right? When Rand was sick,
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: the land was sick. When Rand was hot and bothered
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: and angry, the land was hot. You know, we have
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: this winter's heart, which is Rand when he's cold. And like,
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: there's this mirror that's always been there. Now his awareness
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: of it, I think didn't come until Banes of Gold. Yeah.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: I'm kind of, as I was reading this, I was
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: just thinking that it's like, he couldn't be quiet enough
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: in his head to hear this and to be aware
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: of it. It was always there, but it's like, yeah,
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: he was a young kid running around being scared, being reactive.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: There's just a lot of noise. And then he gets
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: all zen, all quiet, all contemplative and able to hear
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: a much quieter level of reality and thus notice that
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: he literally can feel the land. It's not some esoteric
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: out there thing. It's literally right there in his fingertips
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: and was always there, but was just buried under all
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: the noise.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: Sorry, Fuji's comment. Men caused the drought by making the
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: dragon all hot and bothered.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: And that's why the rains came back once they started,
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: you know.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: Hey, the rain's down in Africa. What can we say? Yeah.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: I also liked the line a little bit later, the
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: land still lived. It lived like a man clinging to
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: the edge of a cliff by his fingertips. Because of course,
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: that makes me think of, yeah, exactly. The Asmodean quote,
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: which granted that was a tuft of grass on a cliff,
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: but still the concept of like, we're clinging, there's hope,
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: there's desperate hope, like all of that. And Rand's like, yeah,
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: we still have hope. Just like that, that time.
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: I still think Asmodean should have had a chance at redemption.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: That little anecdote definitely set him up for it. Him
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: just dying off screen to Grandal being petty was definitely,
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: it was a good disappointment from the sense of not
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: all stories should be predictable, but it would have been
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: nice if he'd had a redemption arc where the tuft
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: of grass, in fact, did hold and he did survive
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: his desperate hope. And that would have been great.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: And like still kill him off, but maybe like saving
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: Rand or.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: After he's redeemed himself.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, exactly.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: After he's decided he wants to redeem himself. I don't
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: know if you can redeem yourself and you're one of
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: the chosen, but after he had the change of heart.
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: Sure. It's one of those things where can you ever
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: do as much good to make up for all the
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: evil you've done? Maybe not, but you can at least
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: do some good with the time you have left.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: Right, exactly. You only can change the future, unfortunately. So yeah,
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: then Rand and Avienda do some morning flirting. There's a
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: lot of commentary around baths and the wetlands, and we
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: get the shower scene. The very cool, one-power, Age of
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: Legends shower. A lot of fun banter while all that happens.
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is a little more of Avienda's, again,
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: much more explicit about the rules of being Aiel than
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: she has ever been before.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, it reminds me of some of her earliest
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: lectures to Rand about protocol before we even knew her
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: well as like a character in the books. It really,
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: I enjoy the banter, but also it does feel like
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: a very different Ovienda than I'm used to at this point.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: Same, same.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: It is an Ovienda I remember from book five. It
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: was like a year and a half ago.
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And then just a lot of descriptions of, of,
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: the Age of Legends and how arrogant they were. And then, yeah,
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: it leads into her request for a boon, which I
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: think is the whole point of this little section, right?
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: Is she's going to ask a boon that's going to
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: be important later during, it sets up the request during
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: the actual meeting.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: And we have one of the only times that anyone
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: ever meditates on problems with the Age of Legends in
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: these books, right? Because Avienda says, you only assumed you
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: had eliminated war. Your ignorance left you weak. And Rand replies,
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: it did. I can't decide if I would have changed things.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: We wanted our lives to be perfect. So we ignored imperfections.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: You know, sometimes Sanderson laying it out on the table
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: and being really explicit is deeply appreciated because I think
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: that that's been one of the interesting conversations I've had
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: in the fandom over the years is what was wrong
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: with the age of legends? Why was the age of
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: legends able to have the evil that leads to the
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: dark one that leads to the war of power? Like what,
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: If it was truly a utopia, that shouldn't have happened, right?
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: So what's wrong with it? So it's nice to actually
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: have the author here say, like, in our quest for perfection,
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: we maybe overshot reality a bit. And that might have
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: been the problem. And yeah, it just seems like something
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: to think about when one contemplates what one's utopic visions
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: of the future might be.
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: I've heard the phrase, especially when talking about Apple, the company,
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: success hides problems.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: Ooh, I like it.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: Because when you look at an organization or a world
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: or a society, the more successful you become, you assume
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: everything you're doing must be correct for you to be
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: that successful. And therefore, you can't have any problems. Nothing
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: needs to change.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: And that ties great with what Athlon's saying of like,
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: utopia only works if we're all exactly the same and
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: nothing changes. You're forcing a flattening onto everyone else based
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: on your own sense of success. And that's inherently like
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: super oppressive and terrible for everyone who isn't you.
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: Which comes back to Rand killing the Dark One. That's
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: the flaw with killing the Dark One. You are creating
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: a utopia where no one can be evil, which means
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: no one can be even a little bit outside of
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: what you deem as evil, which is a flattening of society.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: And that's what's evil itself.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: That part. Everyone has to be his vision of good
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: in order to eliminate evil. Yeah. And that's just, no.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: No one person can encompass all the complexity of goodness
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: that is humanity in aggregates. Oh, yeah, that's good. That's
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: really good. Yeah, Avienda and the Aiel really are the
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: MVPs on getting Ranch to understand how to deal with
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: the Dark One.
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: Right. You know, you gain more toe by capturing your
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: enemy than killing him.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: That's the G. Well, yes. Yeah.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: It's so critical to understand that you... cannot be the
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: arbiter of reality. Even if you're literally the chosen one,
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: even if you're literally the dragon reborn, even if you're
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: literally Jesus or whoever else is in charge of your
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: particular cosmology, even if you're literally that person, you cannot
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: possibly encompass all of everything and dictate all of everything
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: for everyone without simply being evil. It's just nuance is
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: bigger than any one character that can hold, even a
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: fictional one.
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: And I feel like Mistborn really takes this concept also
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: and goes forward because that has the two gods of
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: ruin and preservation. And obviously, if you just had one,
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: preservation would lock you in exactly the same, nothing changing,
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: static universe. You know, we need entropy to function. We
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: need an energy gradient. We need things to change. And
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: so you need ruin. But at the same time, if
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: you only had ruin, everything would be destroyed instantly. And
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: so you need some way to like have some stability. So.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: He definitely took that concept of balance and took it
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: into the Mistborn series.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not surprised that he managed to nail this
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: line so well, given that he was able to spin
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: up such two gods to hold together a whole cosmology
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: off of that meditation. Because, yeah, I'm not one much
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: for binaries. I'm famously anti-binary. But even within that, I
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: have to acknowledge there is two end members involved. to
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: this thing. And that gradient between the two is where
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: all the juice of reality is at. It really is.
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: It would be really interesting to take another look at
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: this kind of content and try to write a story
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: that didn't depend so much on balance as it did
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: on spectrums.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: That's the book we should try to write. That's the
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: book we should try to co-author. A spectrum-based magic system
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: or world system, not even just the magic.
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: Anyway, moving on to Egwene.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Rand promises to not be angry when Avienda surprises
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: him later. And we move on to Egwene, who was
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: definitely going to be surprising and angering Rand deliberately, repeatedly.
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: Oh, man. Sometimes their conversations make me want to slam
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: my head against a wall.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: Probably some of the most infuriating conversations is Sanderson writing
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: Rand and Egwene's conflicts. It's like, I want to punch
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: everybody involved. But yeah, we start with Egwene in a dream.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: Not actually dealing with Rand yet. We have Egwene seeing,
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: I think, her own death?
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I was going to say, seeing her flame of
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: Tar Valon that consumes her in a frozen pillar of glass, right?
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: That's exactly what happens.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: A column of light, because it counteracts Balefire, which is
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: described as a beam of light.
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: Well, I would say it counteracts the dark cracks in
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: the ground that Balefire creates by creating this column of
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: light that crystallizes, yeah. And then, of course, the sphere
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: that's breaking apart, I assume, is the alliance or the
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: world or.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: Her conception of the world that she's trying to flatten
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: into one completely non-nuanced sense of who's right and who's wrong.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: Could be the Dark One's prison, too, that her little, like,
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: I don't want you to break the seals would cause
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: it to... She could, like, tie more ropes around the
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: seals to hold them together and then it would fracture
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: from the inside.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I absolutely hate her entire argument. Just keep spackling
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: over the absolutely crumbling drywall in your house and hope
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: that this winter the house doesn't literally blow over. It
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: makes me so angry how she's like, yeah, it's crumbling,
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: but what about a little bit more super glue? That'll
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: be good enough. Like, what? It makes me so angry.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: And even here in the vision, right? She's like running
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: around just trying to fix up the world. And it's like,
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: you know what? Maybe your vision of the world, your
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: entire cosmology, maybe that needs to be fundamentally reworked. Maybe
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: the seals, the alliance, the supremacy of the White Tower,
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: maybe none of that is actually what's keeping the world together.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: So she's sleeping in the tower because Gawain insisted that
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: she's overworking herself to the point that she needs her
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: own bed, which like, very husbandly of him. Get a
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: reference back to Halima and her headaches that were messing
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: with Egwene's head and how Egwene still has headaches. And
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: it's just one of those, like, we don't talk enough
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: about how Egwene has had magic-induced migraines going ever since
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: Landfear tried to kill her at the end of Fires
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: of Heaven. She has been lying about how much she's
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: been having headaches to the Wise Ones since the recovery
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: from that. Then Halima gets in there and causes all
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: those other headaches. And she's just always sleeping not enough
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: and dreaming too much and having headaches. And she just
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: barely ever mentions it to anybody. She does all of
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: this on headaches.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: Because you're supposed to be sleeping more, right? And she's
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: not sleeping. She's just in the world of dreams almost
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: every night.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: So not only is she a teenager who's being expected
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: to carry the weight of a 3,000-year-old institution with 300-year-old
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: women all in a Congress that doesn't want to work
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: with her, not only is she a newlywed, not only
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: has she just barely started her career in every possible
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: sense of the word, she's doing it on migraine-inducing lack
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: of sleep with prior brain trauma. Like, she is truly
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: not operating at peak condition the entire latter half of
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: the series.
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: Wonder why she commits suicide.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, wonder why she's so angry and frustrating and annoying
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: and making decisions we don't agree with and not reaching
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: out to people for help and not connecting with Lyle
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: in the way we want. I wonder why she's making
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: all those awful decisions and ultimately just offs herself rather
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: than continuing to suffer. Cannot imagine why.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: We talk about Agenan a little bit. So she's... checked
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: to Guinan's back, or Llewellyn, sorry, his backstory.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: Her and Delmon, both of them.
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they've checked out, you know, they're not bad people.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: They'll never cause any intentional harm, but her, I like
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: Naineev being like, but they certainly caused a bunch of
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: harm unintentionally.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Naineev vouched for them, in a way.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, God, it's amazing how much Egwene is just a
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: lesson in the lack of self-care and what that can
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: do to a person.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you have to sleep. no matter how much you're
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: 18 and think you don't. You really do.
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: We get the report that Camelon is lost, probably hundreds
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: of thousands dead.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot of refugees, but there's a lot
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: more casualties.
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: Do we know how big the city originally was? Was
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: it a million, or was it like... I want to
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: say it's.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: Like approaching a million, maybe, generously. I don't know if
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: we ever get told specifically.
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: Maybe?
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: But I don't think there's cities that are much bigger
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: than a million people in this world, right? So Camelon
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: can't be, you know, an outlier to that. Camelon can
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: be at the top, but.
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: Right. 300,000.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's significantly less than a million.
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: So hundreds of thousands are likely dead might mean there's
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: like 100,000 left.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: Well, OK, so also imagine like it's the middle of
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: the night and a natural disaster firebomb strikes in the
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: middle of the city. How many people are going to
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: get out, just percentage-wise?
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: Well, and the Trollocs locked the gates, right?
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: Right, because there were Dark Friends locking the gates. So
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: it takes someone like Talmanes punching through. So yeah, I mean,
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: the idea that less than 100,000 escaped from a city
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: of 300,000 is very plausible. There could be as few
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: as 50,000 people that got out, right? Most people in
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: the city probably died or are in Trollocs. Trolloc camps
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: that might get liberated throughout the course of the campaigns
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: or not, depending.
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: So she realizes she's late for the meeting with Rand
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: and heads to the field of Marilor.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: Speedwalking to the meeting.
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: Sort of a little bit of thought about what Rand's done, right?
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: He's created all these people who are together who may
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: have problems. And it's like exactly what he did with
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: the Aiel, right? Which is take all these people who
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: have personal vendettas and put them in one tent and
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: try and unite them.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: You know, it's either going to go really well or
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: really badly. It's all your eggs in one basket, all
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: your chips on red, right? Like, if this works, it's
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: going to work real good. But what a gamble. But yeah,
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: Egwene is convinced of her own importance in this. The
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: world needs an Omerlin. And then we get a nice
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: description of the fields of Marilor geographically.
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I kind of wanted to read that, actually. I
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: thought that was a nice little, like, considering the importance
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: of the field of Marilor to the last battle, I
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: thought this was a really good description of Because I
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: don't think we ever get such a succinct description of
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: how it's all laid out other than right here. Maybe
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: a little bit again when the map pops up for
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: the last battle, but.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: This is one of the very critical info dumps if
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: you want to understand the final battle in all of
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: its detail. This is laying the groundwork before everything gets
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: chaotic and cross-cut with different, you know, Sharan invasions and whatnot.
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It was a large, triangular area of Shinaran grassland,
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: bounded on two sides by converging rivers, the Mora and
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: the Aranan. Look, the two rivers. And on the other
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: by woods. The grass was broken by Daisharnab, a rocky
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: outcrop about 100 feet high, with cliff walls, and on
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: the Arafelan side of the Moria by Pachamon. Polov Heights,
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: a flat-topped hill about 40 feet high, with gradual slopes
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: on three sides and a steeper slope on the riverside.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: On the southwest of Polov Heights lay an area of
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: bogs in nearby the River Mora shallows, known as... Hawal.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: Hawal?
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: Oh, is that a Y? No. Haval.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: Hawal.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: Hawal.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: H-A-W-A-L?
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: H-A-W-V-A-L.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: Oh, mine does not have a V.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: Interesting. Interesting.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I have the now an original series on Prime
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: Video paperback version.
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: I wonder if mine is a transcription error to the
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: digital book.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: Probably, because Hawal is definitely how they say it in
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: the audiobook.
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you have Hawal. Okay, yeah. I'll just assume that mine,
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: for some reason, has an extra V inserted in there.
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: The River Mora Shallows, known as Hawal Ford, a convenient
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: crossing place between Arafel and Shinar.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so we've got... Water crossings, we've got cliffs, we've
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: got a still tall but not quite as sheer hill, right?
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: We've got a lot of topography, a lot of up
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: and down, a lot of different kinds of things. It's
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: a very D & D campaign map, right? It's like
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: it's grassy, but then it's bounded by rivers and also
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: there's high ground.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: It's really an ideal battlefield for a campaign, a set
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: piece battle.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: And again, I think it's supposed to be based on
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: a real battle of some kind. So it may actually be.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: Oh, I have read about this. And this is very
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: much one of those Michael Livingston's bag things because he
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: is a military historian and he's a big old fan
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: of Wheel of Time. And I know that he is
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: the authority on this. The Battle of Malden that Perrin did,
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: I know, is based on a real battle. I believe
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: this one also is, but it's not as obvious of
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: a name. Like literally Perrin's battle is modeled after a
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: battle called the Battle of Malden because words are funny. Yeah,
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: this definitely has real history behind it. And that's part
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: of why it's so, you know, well articulated is because
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: you can take actual battles and write them into fantasy.
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I would have to go back to the
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: Michael Livingston stuff and look at that. But I was
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: fairly certain that there was real world inspiration for a
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: lot of what happens in the last battle. At least
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: the taking of the high, the giving up the high
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: ground and then taking it back.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: I have, I literally have origins in my lap. Where
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: am I looking up? Finding every battle except the one
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: I want. There we go. I found it. Last battle.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: That was what I had to look it up. This enormous,
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: wide-ranging battle is based on the historical Battle of Austerlitz,
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: fought on December 2, 1805. Also known as the Battle
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: of the Three Emperors, Austerlitz was a remarkable victory for
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: Napoleon Bonaparte. Though he was greatly outnumbered, his tactics enabled
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: the Grand Army of France to beat the combined armies
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: of the Russian and Austrian empires and effectively end the
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: Third Coalition. And then there's a lot more to read
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: about that. Let me see if I can find an
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: irrelevant part.
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: I think Sam and Asai got the answer maybe a
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: split second before you did and had it in chat.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: So yeah, this is mostly a description of how Napoleon's
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: battle went. Okay, here's the, at the end of the entry.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: Unlike most battles in the Wheel of Time, which typically
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: take only pieces of the historical conflicts upon which they
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: are based, the last battle replicates its base battle very neatly.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: That is, once one realizes that Marilor is a mirror
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: image of the Austerlitz battlefield, rotated 90 degrees clockwise. The
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: River Mora is the Goldbach Stream. The Polov Heights are
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: the Pratsen Heights. Dashar Nob is Zuran Hill. The Bogs
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: are Stachan Ponds. Interestingly, only the ruins on the northwest
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: of the Field of Marilor are in the wrong position.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: By the actions of the last battle, those would seem
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: to correspond to Solklnit's castle, but their corresponding topographical position
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: ought to be at Hawal Ford to the southwest. So,
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: there's definitely several paragraphs of... Michael Livingston explaining the Napoleonic
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: battle in between those two paragraphs. But yes, basically every
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: cool set piece battle has some amount of historical basis.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: And according to Michael Livingston, this is one of the
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: ones that most thoroughly matches where it historically comes from
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: rather than being an amalgamation of different things. So yeah,
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: it's a Napoleonic battle, TLDR.
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: I find it interesting that Rand did not invite the
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: Ogier to the meeting to bind them to sign the
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: treaty because I think he thinks they're going to open
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: the Book of Translation.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: Right, right.
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: Also, he's not going to be able to bind them
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: to any sort of treaty. The Ogier are going to
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: do what they want, and no one's got a problem
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: with that.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the Ogier are going to be like, good for you.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: That's going to be their approach. Except for Loyal, the
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: millennial Ogier who wants to write a book, and all
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: of his friends who are like, nah, we're going to
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: fight for this world. Now is not the time for
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: the book of translation.
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: We don't know what the Wise Ones are going to do,
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: because Rand assumes they're going to be on his side,
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: but it turns out not all of them are, just
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: most of them.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because it turns out that neither Rand nor Egwene
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: properly understands the debate that they're having, and the Aiel do.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: The wise ones much more quickly understand what's actually being discussed.
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: Right. We've got every nation there except the Seafolk and
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: the Aiel. Only Merendi and Eredoman are missing, and we
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: know Merendi and Eredoman show up later.
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: I like the line where she talks about, she thinks
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: to herself about how she didn't invite the Windfinders because
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: they wouldn't be politically useful, but she's thinking, actually, I
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: just do not want to be in negotiations with them
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: again because, oh my God, that went so badly. I
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: feel like I was lucky to walk away with my dress,
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: which I just love that, that we've heard that about
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: the Windfinders and the Seafolk in general so much, but
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: so often when our characters interact with them for various
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: plot or Teviren reasons, they're not nearly as... incredible of
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: negotiators right it's just sort of a reputation they have
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: but in this thought we get Egwene who thinks she's
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: literally more important than the dragon reborn for saving the
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: world just being like I'm gonna give them such a
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: wide berth in the future no thank you I like
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: that line there's a lot.
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: Of all these nations coming together I didn't really feel
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: there's some conversation between them some bad blood you know
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: I didn't really feel there was a lot there just
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: sort of summarized by, I can almost wonder if this
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: meeting was the work of the Dark One, hoping that
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: we would end up destroying one another and doing his
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: work for him. Just that there's this internal strife that
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: Rand has to overcome. It's kind of, they're trying to
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: establish it there.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree. There's not a lot that I wanted
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: to talk about other than, yeah, that line. And I
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: was almost thinking that, like, In another timeline where Rand
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: is going evil, but in a less wildly explosive way,
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: this meeting would have happened and it would have turned
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: into some sort of massive like red wedding style. Everyone
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: gets their throat slit or forcibly turned and thus the
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: battle was lost before it even started. Like this scene
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: could have gone very differently if Rand had been corrupted.
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: If Darth Rand.
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if Darth Rand had been a competent political operator
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: who didn't simply want to burn everyone to a crisp.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: You know, because Darth Rand was, as we got him,
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: was pretty much a loose cannon. But if we'd had
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: a more calculated style of Darth Rand, a.
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: Much more like a Morden type.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Exactly. A more Morden or Demondred style distortion of Rand,
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: then this meeting very well could have been. Now you
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: will fight to the death, battle royale style, and whichever
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: one comes out on top gets to be new Nablus
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: or whatever, you know. So there's definitely, yeah, this either
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: goes very dark or very light. Either way, it's going
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: to be intense. It will not be a moderate or
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: middling or compromised result. It's all or nothing.
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: Egwene has the thought he's not going to have the
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: presence of mind or the time to act as commanding
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: general as well as fight the Dark One, which I
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: think is true, right? That's the one thing he has
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: to concede on is like, Yes, everyone has to be
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: under his command conceptually, but then he has to delegate
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: that command to an actual commander who can be present
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: on the battlefield, which ends up being Elaine. And there's
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: a lot in these two chapters that leads to that
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: becoming Elaine. And I think it starts with this thought.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because, I mean, honestly, of all the critiques that
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: Gwyn has of Rand, this is the most solid. Like, Rand,
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: what do you mean you're going to command a giant
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: continent-spanning battle and also have an esoteric, like, folding reality
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: cosmic mind game with the dark but you can't do
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: both of those things why would you even think you
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: can do that you're the figurehead delegate and it makes
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: a lot of sense to have the queen of england
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: do it because the sun never sets on the andorran
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: empire or whatever.
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: Um we then have the next little bit is about
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: roiden king of murandy showing up the sort of this
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: suspicion that he might be Demondred is my thought. That's
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: kind of what this setup is.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah. When Rand says, oh, you're not him. Yeah. That's
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: what that line. Yeah. That was my thought was that
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: he was really hoping that that was going to be
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: the Demondred unveil. And it turns out now Roiden's just
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: kind of a prick that Wasn't around, but he's very
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: much a normal guy from this age, not a dark friend,
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: not a master of evil in disguise, just a dude.
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: But when he said he had an army in the south,
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: Mirandi was kind of what Rand took from that. And
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: he's definitely portraying his European centrist view, sorry, Randland centrist view,
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: and not looking outside that to the Sharans, right? Neither
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: did we, right? The first time we read it, certainly
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: I didn't think of the Sharans. as an option, even
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: though looking back, they were mentioned a fuck ton in
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: these books.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: Jordan really did tell you Shara was going to matter. Yeah,
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: he really did. But yeah, I remember just having the
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: thought of like, why is it that Shara isn't being included? Right.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: I didn't expect them to like suddenly come in at
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: the 11th hour with an on your left for the
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: bad guys. I just thought that they were getting ignored
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: because we're like, you know, making the weird Asian countries
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: just not be relevant to the world. Like, that was
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: my assumption right up until they crashed into the ice
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: to die.
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: I love Egwene's little fuck with them. You're welcome, she
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: said softly.
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: Oh my god, yeah, implying that the White Tower had
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: it all under control the whole time.
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: Do you think that's a lie? I mean, that really
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: borders on it, right?
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: I was wondering about that.
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: Not that she's taken the oaths. Has she taken those? No,
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: she took the oaths, but not the test.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. She took the oaths. The oaths are what
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: make Aes Sedai, not the testing. Yeah, my best thought
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: is that she has had some Aes Sedai doing something
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: to try to help recently. And so she's able to
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: imply a lot more help than has actually been given.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: Because she says, I hear your rule is consolidating nicely. Right,
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: so any amount of her helping with his rule consolidating,
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: any amount would make this not technically a lie, but
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: the way she says it can imply so much more
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: heavy lifting than she's actually done. That's kind of how
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: I have to bridge that gap in order to make
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: it not a lie. Like, yeah, I picked up some trash.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: You're welcome for helping with the event.
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: Right. You picked up your cup that you brought with you.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: I helped with the event, you know?
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: Okay, so... The next thing that I really want to
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: talk about is the grass turning green at Rand's feet.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this is more than the clouds breaking in an
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: unnatural circle. This is him using tree singing, right?
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: Is it? That's that's the question, right? Or is this
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: just his direct connection with the land? I feel like
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: later when he grows the grove of trees, that is
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: tree singing. But I feel like he's he's not humming here,
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: is he?
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: No one's close enough to hear. He describes what he
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: does as humming very quietly in later sequences. So given
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: that he's walking 20, 30 feet away from everybody else,
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: I'm assuming he's humming to himself and making the grass
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: do its thing. At this point, like, I feel like
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: at this point he's doing that because he talks about
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: it later like he's comfortable with the skill, which implies
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: to me that he was doing it before he started
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: commenting on it. But originally when I read it, I
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: assumed it was super Tavirin. And then, you know, on
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: subsequent reads, I've been like, oh, when does he start
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: tree singing? It must be fairly early. That's just my assumption.
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: Whereas I think it might be because we just got
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: the mention of how he's connected with the land and
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: he can feel the roots growing. And right. And that
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: he can maybe encourage that. That was my thought.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: But he does tree sing later to make the Grove Spring.
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: He does. He does treat singing later make the gross.
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: And I think that's what he's describing when he's talking
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: about the humming under his breath. I don't necessarily think
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: he's doing it here, but I could see it both ways. Right.
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: This isn't one of those things where I have like
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: definitive proof one way or the other.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's debatable. It starts somewhere. And I don't see
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: why it wouldn't start here. But maybe it's just that
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: like he's got the earworm in his head. He's not
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: actually vocalizing it yet. Like, I don't know. And then
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: he does this super cool tent setup move where he
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: just sort of like hurls a bundle of sticks and
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: canvas into the air and it poofs into a giant
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: pavilion and he just walks through it as it gets
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: set up and then everyone else has to walk in
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: after him like a ding dong.
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: And it's great. This is very much the Sanderson visualizing
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: anime version of Wheel of Time. I'm not mad about it.
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: It looks so cool.
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: And I'm not mad about it. Yeah. It's like it
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: looks like picturing it in my head looks really cool.
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: This just like you throw a bundle of cloth and
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: like it self expands, almost self builds itself into a
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: pavilion that you walk into and then you just hold court.
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: It would almost be cooler if he was constructing it
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: strictly out of the power, but having it pre-made is
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: also pretty cool.
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: Setting up a regular tent and a regular wood and
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: canvas tent is fine. And then, yeah, he looks at
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: all of the groups that have already shrunk themselves down
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: from their larger armies, right? Each group has come out
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: with like 50 people or whatever. And now he's like, okay,
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: each of you get to come with five. And then
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: that's who's going to go in and actually fill up
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: the tent. Oh, Marzipan asks a good question. Doesn't it
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: start with apples first?
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure, yeah, he sings those.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: He sings those apples into existence. So he has the
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: skill basically as soon as he coalesces as Zen Rand.
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: Because he remembers tree singing with the Aiel and with
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: the Ogier.
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: That's a Luz Theron skill. So he doesn't actually have
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: to build familiarity with it as Rand because he can
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: just lean on Luz.
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: Fair enough. But yeah, I don't know. I think the
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: clouds are always just his Tevira-ness and I question if
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: plants are ever his Tevira-ness. But I don't know. I
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: don't know. I feel like it's left fuzzy on purpose.
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: Anything that gives him aura, you know, I feel like
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: some of that's just severeness around him and the odds
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: of things now going good. Because he, ever since coming
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: down from the mountain, is the good balance to the
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: Dark One's dark balance. Before, he was his own balance,
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: which meant he could be dark and he could be light.
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: But now that he's come down from the mountain, he
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: can only— and now the Dark One's escaping, basically— The more
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: the Dark One seeps out into the world and does evil,
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: the more good he can cause to the point where
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: he can even affect, you know, make the world sunny
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: and the grass green in his very presence just by
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: being there. That's sort of my headcanon around that. Right.
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: So if he wants to manipulate literal trees into growing rapidly,
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: into fruiting rapidly, into flowering on command, that's where he
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: needs to bring out the actual tree singing skill.
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: The stuff he does with intention, he needs the skill. But,
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: you know, and I could be wrong. He might actually
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: whisper to Perrin later that making the grass green is
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: the tree singing. I don't remember. We'll have to get there.
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, they go in with everyone basically acknowledging that
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: this is the dragon versus the Amaryllis and everyone else
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: is here to line up behind one or the other.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: He has 13 glowing globes in the room to provide light.
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: Thought that was a fun little choice.
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, 13, always a weird number. I mean, we got
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: to stick with the number 13 and 7.
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: Well, and every time that she has like a dream
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: about Rand and this confrontation, there's always 13 balls or
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: seven seals or like a hundred and bajillion eyes to die.
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: But like, it's always a significant number. Even here in
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: real life, the number is significant.
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: I like how she gets pissed off at Nynaeve for
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: supporting Rand. I mean, Nynaeve is fully in Rand's camp
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: ever since he picked her up and they went off
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: to cleanse the taint. She's been by Rand's side ever since.
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: Which is Nynaeve, I mean, right? That is 100% what
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: Nynaeve left the two rivers to do.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sorry. The fiercely protective mother hen is proud
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: of her chicks growing up. That's so inconsistent. How dare she?
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: And I do like that Egwene calls herself out. Like, well,
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, you are kind of proud of him too, right?
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: Like, yeah.
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: Mad at him and proud of him at the same time. So.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: She'll get over it with respect to Nynaeve, or she
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: would have if she hadn't died. Right.
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: This is also where Rand actually confronts Roadren and looks
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: him in the eye and does the whole, oh, you're
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: not actually a dark friend. A chosen. Yeah. He's like,
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: what do you mean? Of course not.
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: We get confirmation about the White Tower trying to kidnap Al-Salam,
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: and that's why he was lost, and how Rand was
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: able to find him, etc., etc., Egwene had only discovered
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: a few days before, you know, but we get confirmation
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: that that is in fact what was happening. We also
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: get note of how Cadswain is still above and beyond
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: all other eyes to die and is thus the obvious
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: successor to Egwene's Amarland ship, right? She is not being counted.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: Rand does not count Cadswain as among Egwene's five.
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: He's one of Rand's five. Exactly.
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: She thinks it's a troubling precedent. I'm like, but Rand
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: gets his retinue too and Cadswain's definitely there. She's not
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: with you. She's never been with you. Best she's ever
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: going to do with being with you is being your
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: successor after you die.
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: Oh, Fuji, I didn't know that there was fan speculation
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: that Rodren was supposed to be Demondred. Is that because
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: he was like competent all of a sudden? Then there
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: was a transition from that's why he's like stabilizing his rule.
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: And all of a sudden it's like people can't change.
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: They must be taken over by Forsaken. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah,
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: I guess I never really got into the where is
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: Demondred debate as much because I was like, well, of
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: course he's supposed to be Taim. So anything else you
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: make up is just going to come after the fact. Sure.
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: Which in a way it kind of did because we
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: just made up an army for him. Not that it
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: was made up, but it came from one of the
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: other nations. So there was no person that we were
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: exposed to where we were like, oh, that's... Demondred. The
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: best you could have done has been like, oh, well,
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: Demondred's probably in one of those other nations that we
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: haven't heard about. But I feel like people have been like, no,
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: that's a cop out. You could always say that he's
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: somewhere else, that there's some other nation out there somewhere,
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: land of the bad men, something like that, some other
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: continent we never even heard of. So I never felt
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: like that was a good thing to speculate about.
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: So yeah, basically Rand lays out the opening of the
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: argument of this conversation as basically being, we need to
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: do better with the what happens next planning than we
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: did with the last war of power. But we have
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: a lot less to work with, but we need to
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: be a lot smarter about what we do.
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: Essentially, we need to work together instead of fighting nation
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: by nation by nation, because then he'll just mow us
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: down one by one. We need to fight as a
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: coordinated group. And that's what this treaty is all about.
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: Although he is just like, they've got the Forsaken. I'm like,
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: do they? They've got a couple left. But man, you
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: really kind of decimated the Forsaken. Well, you, the forces
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: of light certainly have. Moraine had a lot to do
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: with that. Yeah.
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: But then, you know, he also shows that as much
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: as he's thinking big, he's thinking small. He's like, I
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: personally insist that you personally not change a single thing
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: about the world in the immediate aftermath of my death.
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: And that will fix all the world's problems forever.
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: He's so big and expansive and then just so small
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: and missing the point entirely all at the same time.
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: I feel like this is he starts off with the
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: treaty that you have after World War One. That kind
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: of forces World War II because it locks Germany into
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: place in a way that it has no escape. And
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: so it really created this ceasefire more than an end
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: to the war.
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: Another one of Egwene's great critiques is, What you are
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: trying to do here is beyond your calling, Rand. You
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: cannot change human nature and you cannot bend the world
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: to your whims. Let people live their lives and choose
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: their own paths. It's a good critique. You cannot single-handedly
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: order the fates of millions for the foreseeable future. It's
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: not realistic as a how to deal with the end
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: of the world.
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: Not without enforcement.
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: Plan. Yeah, you can't just like have a strong speech
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: and have that be the end of it. You need, yeah, enforcement.
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: You need teeth. behind it you need an iterative robust
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: self-correcting system not just one solid moment of feelings.
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: And so yeah we get we get the three things
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: he wants the treaty he wants the seals broken and
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: he wants to be the commander of the armies are
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: the three things he lists out.
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: All of those things end up changing radically from his initial.
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: Pitch and that's sort of what the rest of these
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: chapters are about.
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah that's the majority of what of what goes down
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: is negotiating on each of those three points.
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think the seals is the easiest
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: of the three to talk. Well, I guess the commander
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: is the easiest. I almost want to work backwards because
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: it feels like the one they talk about last, which
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: is the commander, is the easiest to be like, yeah, Rand,
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: you're not there. And he's like, yeah, good point.
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like, yes, I agree. Working backwards is the
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: way to go through the low hanging fruit to high
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: hanging fruit. But yeah, basically, they disagree. We're going to
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: delegate it to a person who understands that their job
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: is to sit in one place and process information rather
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: than running around putting out fires. This is the captain
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: of the starship. The captain of the starship is not
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: driving the starship or manning the laser guns. He's just
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: sitting there intaking information.
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: And making decisions and Let's make it the pregnant lady.
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: Elaine is really good at knowing how to listen to advisors.
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: She's been trained to do that her whole life. She's
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: demonstrated that she is competent at knowing who to listen
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: to and when and how to synthesize information. Also, she's pregnant. Also,
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: she's very well known. She's a perfect candidate to shove
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: this off onto. And that's why it's the least contentious
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: of the three alterations.
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: And then probably the second least contentious is when to
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: break the seals. And I feel like there's a fairly
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: long discussion about that. And there is this this moment where, yeah,
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: the plastering over of the existing seals is Egwene's like solution.
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: And he's like, that's just not going to work. But
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: then she does get him to come down and say, like, OK,
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: you get to choose when they're broken. We don't need
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: to break them now. We're not going to break them
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: at the start of battle. There's going to be a
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: strategic moment when you need to choose to break them.
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: And I'm trusting you to do that. Now, it's kind
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: of irrelevant because those end up not being the real seals.
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: All this bluster and, you know, he's like, I've got them.
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: I'll break them whenever I need to break them. Doesn't
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: end up coming real because he doesn't have them. So
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: that's all bluster.
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: But it does set us up as the readers to
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: know that the breaking of the seals is going to
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: be an important piece of timing, that it is going
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: to be something that we have to worry about, not
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: just the act of, but the when of and how
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: exactly does it happen. And it lets us articulate that
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: that's going to matter, even though it will not matter
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: at all in the way that these characters think.
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: And then, of course, you have the treaty, which has
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: the most modifications and the stuff we really should just
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: talk about from the beginning.
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: To require a boon. This is where it comes in.
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: So yeah, some of what's in the dragon's piece makes
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: a lot of sense, right?
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: Oh, I do want to talk about Rand's, I said
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: he's going to kill him, right? There's a moment, so
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: when you talk about breaking the seals, where he's like,
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: I'm going in there and I'm going to kill him.
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: And there is that like, interesting moment, I think, where
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: at this point, Rand does think the best solution is
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: killing the Dark One. And I wanted to sort of
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: talk about that a little bit, just because I think
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: it's It's important. It's an important moment where you're like,
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: oh yeah, is Ran going to actually kill the Dark One?
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: Because that's the plan going into it. Yeah.
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: She doesn't have a good reason for why he shouldn't
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: do that. The Aiel are the ones that really provide
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: the logic against that. She's just pushing back on it
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: because of the seals. But we should also talk about
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: how he gets kind of paranoid and weird at her.
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: And he's like, you want Cydene to be tainted again.
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: You're threatened. Your power is threatened by men not being crippled.
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: It's just like, what are you talking about? What are
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: you talking about? How could the Aes Sedat? That is
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: a ridiculous line of reasoning.
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: But at the same time, she's like, you need to
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: be guided by the White Tower. And he's like, yeah,
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: last time that happened, they put me in a box.
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: So maybe there's a little bit of trauma there.
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's just it's a lot of big feelings.
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: They're both having a lot of very big feelings.
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: So and then there is this moment right after that
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: where he kind of like he gets command. There's this
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: moment where she's going to speak and something in the
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: tent changes. And that's when he grows those trees.
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because the light dims and that's from the tree
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: canopy growing over.
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: And there's sounds came from outside a faint cracking sound. Right.
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: The sound of the trees cracking as they grow and
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: splitting open. It's sort of this moment that's meant to
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: overawe them, but they don't even realize what's happening. And, like,
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: it awes them when they step outside and they realize
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: that it has happened. But that's just sort of an
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: interesting moment where it's not obvious what's going on when
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: you're reading it. Yeah. And so there is that moment
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: when everyone looks like they're about to agree, and then Egwene,
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: with her experience of resisting Tavirinus, stops everyone from agreeing.
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: And Rand is about to walk out, right? He's like, fine,
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: if you won't agree... To my terms, I'm out of here.
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to deal with you.
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: It really does almost fall apart.
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: Basically, they call his bluff, and so he has to
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: kind of follow through with it.
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, they're playing chicken past the point of no
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: return at this point, right?
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: And this is where Moraine walks in, and Moraine has
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: prophesied to save the day. This is the, everything will
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: fail without her. It's because if she hadn't walked in
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: in this moment, Rand would have walked out. The Alliance
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: would have fallen apart. The last battle would have been lost.
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: It would have been a piecemeal, desperate struggle where, yeah,
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: people might live or might not. Rand dies. The world dies.
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: The Dark One rules over the ashes. But because Matt
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: was willing to give up half the light of the world,
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: in walks a five-foot-tall China doll dressed in blue. And
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: everything is fixed.
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: I mean, thank goodness for the return of Moraine. How
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: long had that been? How many years have we been
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: expecting that?
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: So many.
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: So many years. I think my only regret is just
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: how few pages she actually gets and how few lines.
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: Her entrance, though, it's fantastic. This whole scene is great.
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: She comes in quoting eye of the world shit left
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: and right. This is one of those scenes where I'm like,
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: Sanderson had to have only filled in between the chunks
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: that Jordan wrote.
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: Jordan must have written The Return of Moraine.
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: He had to have. He had to have. It feels
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: so Jordanian, this whole section. And all we needed was
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: for that energy to get sustained for the rest of
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: the book instead of petering out.
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: Because you know that, like, he wrote The Return of
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: Moraine when she disappeared, in his head at least. Yeah,
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: for sure. Like, I bet that scene existed of her
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: walking in in the last battle and fixing things.
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: And she's going to see these kids all have grown
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: up in the blink of an eye and all of
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: the changes. And, like, yeah, no, he had that vision
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: for how she gets to process how all of the
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: other kids have changed. Yeah, no, he knew that. He
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: saw it coming. So, chapter six. You want to read
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: us in?
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah. a knack. What's that referencing?
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: Perrin having a knack for explaining to Rand why people
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: are valid for having their own thoughts and feelings. I
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: don't actually know. The symbol is the staff that Moraine
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: had back in Eye of the World. Again, this feels
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: Jordanian as hell.
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: To search the chapter for knack, I get this quote. Moraine,
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: Egwene said, you've come at just the right time. I
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: have a knack for that.
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: A knack for that. Matt gave up his eye for you.
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: I have a knack for that. A knack for showing
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: up at the right time. And the symbol is her staff,
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: which actually we haven't really seen since Eye of the World, right?
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: She lost it in a fight and never replaced it,
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: even though she used it as a club. Now she's
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: got her big old dagger sword that she stabs people with.
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe Tom gave her his spare walking staff on
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: the way back after the Tower of Genji. She's like, oh, yeah,
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: if we're going to be doing the gleam and gleam
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: a woman traveling life, I am going to need a
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: good walking stick. So she's back to having a staff,
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: you know, after all this time.
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: The pavilion grew quiet again. Perrin hated a racket and
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: the people's sense weren't any better. Frustration, anger, fear, terror.
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: Much of it was directed at the woman standing just
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: inside the entrance to the pavilion. Matt, you blessed fool,
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: Perrin thought, breaking into a grin. You did it. You
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: actually did it. For the first time in a while,
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: thinking of Matt made the colors swirl in his vision,
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: because he's been out of existence for a bit.
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: Back in the world again, finally. Yep.
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: He saw Matt on a horse, riding along a dusty road,
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: tinkering with something he held. Perrin dismissed the image. Where
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: had Matt gotten to now? Why hadn't he come back
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: with Moraine? It didn't matter. Moraine was back. Light. Moraine. Moraine.
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: Perrin started toward her to give her an embrace, but
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: Fahil caught him by the sleeve. He followed her eyes. Rand.
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: His face had grown pale. He stumbled away from the
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: table as if all else had been forgotten, and pushed
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: his way to Moraine. He hesitantly reached out and touched
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: her face. By my mother's grave, Rand whispered, then fell
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: to his knees before her. How? Moraine smiled, resting hand
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: on his shoulder. The wheel weaves as the wheel wills, Rand.
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: Have you forgotten that?
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: So he falls to his knees in front of her, right?
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: She puts her arm out at her own shoulder height
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: to put it on his shoulder, right?
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: That's how short she is and how tall he is.
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: His head is at her head height when he goes
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: down on his knees.
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: If anything, she's reaching up.
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, still, still. Yes, absolutely. Just need everyone to visualize
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: how tiny she is compared to Rand.
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Gotta love, you know, again, this eye of
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: the world shit she's throwing around. How? The wheel weaves
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: is the wheel wills. Boom. Like, I'm not answering your
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: goddamn question. I'm throwing some stuff out there. You're not
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: getting information from me until I damn well want to
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: give it to you. Yeah.
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: It's got Jordan's fingerprints all over it. We all change
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: day by day. Me more than some lately. Stop. So good.
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: And then she does the Aragorn to the hobbits. You know, it's,
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: I should be kneeling before you because you're the actual
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: savior of the world, you know, whatever, whatever.
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: I sent you on the quest, but you are the
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: ones who are doing the quest. Right. Right. Exactly. So, okay.
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: Got to go back to Matt though. What is Matt
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: tinkering with and what, where is he going?
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: Doesn't he grab a blacksmith's puzzle or something? Or is
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: he playing with a Sean Chan artifact? I forget. I
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: feel like it matters. Yeah. I feel like it does
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: matter what he's tinkering with. I just can't remember what
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: it is. But he's headed off to deal with Tuon now, right?
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: He's beelining to Ebu Dar to go knock up his wife.
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because he's riding pips into Ebu Dar to get information,
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: finds out about Galgun. But yeah, I don't know. I'm
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: not sure.
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: Maybe he's working on embroidering an eye patch to be
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: even angrier than Uno's.
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: I got nothing.
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: Guess it doesn't matter then.
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: Just maybe think of Matt on the back of the horse,
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: just tinkering, just sort of being a little fidgeter. But,
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: you know, I don't I don't have a I was
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: I was hoping you knew because I was like, I
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: my quick look didn't find anything.
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: I thought it mattered. But if you can't find anything,
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: I'm guessing maybe it doesn't. And I just confused it
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: with something else. I like the Egwene Moraine exchange where
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: Egwene says, oh, the White Tower is so glad to
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: have you back. We haven't forgotten your service. She's like, yeah,
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: I should think finding you would count for something.
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: Not to mention the dragon reborn, although I guess maybe
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: that might count against her.
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but she says, I should think that having discovered
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: a future Amalyn would reflect well upon me. And she
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: has no problem accepting Egwene as mother, you know.
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: No. She's like, yeah, clearly that was going to happen.
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: I knew that from the beginning.
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she's like, I kind of guessed, kind of figured
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: that was going to happen. Also, you know, Matt told her,
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: but like, she knew it was happening.
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: Right, right. Nynaeve hugging Moraine, I think, is a really
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: sweet moment.
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: Oh, that moment. Parents expecting Nynaeve to come unglued at her,
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: to shout at her. No one knows what to expect.
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: And then Nynaeve just bear hugs Moraine.
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: Another reason why I think this was written mostly by Jordan.
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: Because that's an appropriate unification reunion scene.
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: And Moraine stands there for a really long time before
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: returning the embrace hesitantly. It's just beautiful. And yeah, Sanderson
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: could not write it. this succinctly and emotionally. This is
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: so Jordan. Jordan, from the minute that he had the
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: two at loggerheads, he also was imagining like, how does
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: the reunion look?
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: Insufferable woman. Nynaeve grumbled as she wiped a tear from
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: the other eye. Love that.
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: Don't you dare tell Lynn about this. I wouldn't dream
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: of it. They're so cute. And I love Roa Duran
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: just being like, who the hell is this woman and
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: why is the entire tent carrying her? And he keeps
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: getting hit on the side of the head with weaves
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: from different channelers, like men and women alike are just like,
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: shut the fuck up, dude. Nobody cares. Nobody cares what
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: you think. You're not Demon Dredd. You don't matter.
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: And then, yeah, she basically throws the Koreathon cycle at them.
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, just dropping bars again. So Eye of the World
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: with her sense of dramatic timing and her sense of
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: elaborate pacing and storytelling. Like this isn't even the rushed
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: and chaotic moraine of Fires of Heaven, right? This is
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: Eye of the World levels of gravity.
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: And then I actually, this is one where maybe this
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: is a little Sanderson. I don't know if this is,
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: but where they lay it out, like this part of
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: the prophecy is designed for these people, right? You get,
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: the unstained tower breaks and bends knee to the forgotten sign,
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: looking at Egwene, right? That's for the Aes Sedai. You
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: have to bend knee to the forgotten sign. The forgotten
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: sign is his sign.
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: And to me, this feels like Jordan.
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, maybe.
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: It just feels, because she's literally, the scene is describing
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: her walking around reciting poetry while meaningfully glancing at people.
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: She doesn't stop and give a three paragraph explanation about
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: why poetry is relevant to understanding what they need to do.
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: Sure, sure. So the dragon reborn, he has the soul
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: of fire and the heart of stone, right? Because his
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: heart stone had to remember tears. In pride, he conquers,
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: forcing the proud to yield, looking at Gregoran. So Gregoran's
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: the proud. To the borderlanders, the mountains, they are the
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: mountains that have to kneel.
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: He calls upon the mountains to kneel.
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: The seafolk, the seas to give way. Bear Lane, who's
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: represented by a hawk, the very skies to bow.
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, raptors really do bow to no one. So
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: that's a good analogy for her.
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah. The heart of stone. Well, isn't Darlin in.
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: Literally, he's the king of Tyr. Yeah, he's the Tyrant King.
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: So the heart of stone has to... I don't know
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: how remembering Tyr's is relevant, but whatever.
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: Isn't it the stone in Tyr? I mean.
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: Yes. They didn't forget who they were, but okay. All right.
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. And to Elaine, the soul of fire love, right?
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: Because she has, Elaine is the, and or the soul
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: of fire. Like, it works really well. It's really, I
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: don't think it's that contrived.
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: No, it works really well. And it also further proves
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: the point that prophecies are both meaningless and meaningful, right? Like,
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: they mean whatever you want them to mean, and sometimes
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: the world hinges on you having the right meaning, and
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: other times it's just window dressing. And sometimes it's both,
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: and sometimes it's neither.
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: And the symmetry, right? That, like, because the last breaking
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: ended with things going bad, now things are going to
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: come together and be good, right? Like, this breaking is
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: we're breaking up the bad stuff, and we're able to
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: reunite it into a good, new, united whole. Even if
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: it must be shoved down your throat, it's like medicine
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: given to a screaming babe.
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: Mm hmm.
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: And also the inversion of like weep for your salvation
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: doesn't mean wail and gnash teeth because life is hard.
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: It means, you know, beat your chest and tear your
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: hair for the sacrifice of this person who will choose
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: to do this of his own free will for you.
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: Like there's different kinds of weeping, you know.
• 58:15
  Speaker 2: And that's a very Jesus thing. Right. We weep for
• 58:18
  Speaker 2: the man who has sacrificed himself for you.
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, which in this particular instance, I'm like, yeah, yeah,
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: we're allowed to really lean on the Jesus imagery as
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: we discuss the literal sacrifice of actual symbolic Jesus.
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: Like, yeah, yeah. There's no doubt that in the Wheel
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: of Time, you know, Jesus is Rand. Rand is Jesus.
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: You know, Legends Fade to Myth type situation. Yeah.
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: But this is one of those times where I'm like
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: extra not mad about it just being a straight ahead
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: one to one comparison without any kind of like cool
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: world building obfuscation. It's just there it is. Yeah.
• 58:52
  Speaker 2: Well, at least he doesn't die in a cave and
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: then rise up three days later in a new. Oh, wait.
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: There are other times I'm less enthused about it than
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: right here. That's my point.
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: At least he doesn't have three widows attending his funeral. Oh, wait.
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: I also think it's interesting how she uses the lines
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: that we've always attributed to the Aiel to get these
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: people to settle down. Gregorian says the demands are unfair.
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: We can't manage without war, right? Essentially, we have to
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: be able to do war. And she looks at him
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: and says, he shall slay his people with the sword
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: of peace and destroy them with the leaf. right? There's
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: layers to that, right? First, he destroys the Aiel with
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: knowing about peace. Now he's destroying these people with demands
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: for peace. Now, then he's going to use the Aiel
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: to enforce them. He's going to use the leaf following
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: Aiel people to be the teeth of the thing. It
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: just keeps going. Like you can never, with prophecy in
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: these books, you can never assume you've plumbed all the
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: meanings out of a given line. They can just do
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: n-dimensional meaning.
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: Especially since the wheel keeps turning, right? That's the same
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: prophecies in every wheel turning, but the wheel looks a
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: little different, but it still fulfills all the prophecies. Yeah.
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: So then there's the problem also with the Sean Chan.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: I think we didn't, we kind of skipped over that,
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: that like, yes, none of this will be, all this
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: will be null and void if the Sean Chan don't sign.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, which is really the crux of what Avienda's visions
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: are about, right? That's why that Teron Greal gave her
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: those visions was because what do you do with the
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: Sean Chan is an age defining question. How do you
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: handle a slave empire that won't stop expanding? That's a
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: really important question you can't put off till later. Like,
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: as the line says here from Elaine, for a peace
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: treaty to work, both sides must continue to wish for
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: peace because of the benefits presented. Both parties have to
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: want to play the game in order for the rules
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: of the game to matter.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: And so this is the moment when they figure out
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: that the Aiel aren't in the treaty anymore. And Avienda
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: steps forward for her boon.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: And Vranda's like, you too, Brute. I'm so dramatic. You too, Avienda.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: And she's like, don't be a baby.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: And he's like, well, it's just you at least. And
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 2: all the wise ones are like, nope, it's all of us.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: She's wise one. We're wise one. She speaks for the clans. Yeah.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: In this moment, we have decided that Avienda speaks for
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: literally all of us. So you need to shut up
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: and listen.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: Avienda carries our honor. It's like that's the end of
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 2: the discussion.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 2: That's when Sorilia says that. Like, I mean, yeah.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah. If Sorilia says Avienda carries my honor, like you
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: are getting nothing out of them without listening.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: And then I like what Ruark says here, where he's like,
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: our purpose was to prepare for the battle, the last battle.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: We no longer have to be constantly fighting. I don't
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 2: want to be killing these people that I've come to
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: fight side by side with anymore. Right. Like, I don't
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: want to be doing that. That's not what our purpose is.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: We need change. You can't just leave us out.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: Right. And Rand says, but your purpose is war. And
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: Ovienda says, have you literally not been paying attention?
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: We're people too.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: Like, no, our purpose is not war. Our purpose is
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: to be warriors. Our purpose is to have a sense
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: of honor. Our purpose is to keep order in the world.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: Our purpose is to prepare for what we had to do.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: This is what we have to do. We're fucking open
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: to suggestions for the future because of the whole culmination
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: of 3000 years of suffering in the goddamn desert.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: Take a lesson from the Ashaman, right? We are also people, too.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: Not just warriors, not weapons.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: We're not weapons. We're men.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. The Aiel are not spears. They are people.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: Which, of course, then Perrin goes, so let's treat them
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: like tools.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I could have done with slightly less objectification on
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: the heels of don't objectify us as a discussion.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: But it's just Perrin, I would say Perrin, he says,
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: I think, like a blacksmith, but really he thinks like
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: an engineer.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. I mean, blacksmiths are early engineers in
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: a lot of ways.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. 100%. I would believe that they, especially when
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: you talk about who designs the blacksmith puzzles, right? The
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: people who are smart and clever and designing things and
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: engineering things, they can make the puzzles because they're figuring
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: out how to bend metal in interesting ways. Yeah.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: Also, you notice that Perrin has this discussion behind a ward.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: It's like, Rand, can we talk quietly? Because I have
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: a slightly unflattering analogy to use to make you understand
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: what we're doing here.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: But yeah, he makes the Aiel the tenders of peace.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: Peacekeepers, in a very real way. Any nation may call
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: upon them if they feel abused, and the Aiel, not
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: enemy armies, will provide redress. They can hunt criminals across
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: national borders. They are to be subject to the laws
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: of nations in which they reside at the time, but
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: are not subject to of that nation.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: And I can see this as an interesting way, because
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: I feel like in our modern world, what we've depended
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: on instead of a police force across the nation is
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: superpowers to enforce the treaty of what was the United Nations.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 2: That's kind of falling apart now because of fucking Trump. But,
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: you know, that's really what led to the great peace
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: or sort of, you know, because there is more peace.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: There is fewer wars, fewer people dying in wars than
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: ever before.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: The genocides of resource extraction nonwithstanding?
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: I know. It's crazy to think about. Things are slowly
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: getting better in average. It's hard to like... I know.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: I have many quibbles with this line of thinking. I
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: don't know the numbers, but I just side-eye white men
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: of privilege telling me that everything's fine because math, actually.
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: I learned this in college. I've been having thoughts about
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: it for a long time. I... There's an argument there.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: There's an argument there.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and the argument is not that people aren't suffering
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: in great numbers across the world.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, of course.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: The argument that is the vast majority of the world
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: has modernized over the last 100 years, and so many
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 2: fewer people are living in abject poverty because of that modernization.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: No, it's true. I mean, we've got germ theory and electricity,
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: and that changes a lot. Just clean water matters a lot.
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 2: And that changes a lot for a lot of people. Right. Now,
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 2: the cause and effect of what's going on and why
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: you think people are better off. And if you think
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: it's capitalism or if you think it's, you know, science
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: or if you think it's just, you know, inevitable human spirit.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 2: I don't know where you want to go with that.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: But the crux of the point is that instead of
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: doing what we're doing, they have a army that exists
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: independently of nations.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 2: I mean, that.
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: That was the hope of the concept of a UN peacekeeper.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: That was kind of the shiny threefold brochure version of
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: what that's supposed to be. It's obviously failed atrociously for
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: a lot of reasons. But that's the idea. That's the pitch.
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: And yeah, I don't know how I feel about the
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: concept of a nationless police state that everyone agrees to
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: be different. kicked in the face by. I don't know
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: if that's what I think international law and order is
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: supposed to look like.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 2: It's an interesting concept, right? Like, it's a different concept.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 2: It's different, yeah. It's certainly different. And I feel like
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: there is a bit of a flaw there because, like,
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: where do the Aiel live that they don't become just
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 2: dependent on the nations in which they live? Because they
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: don't have their own space. Right.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: How do they not integrate?
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: Like is miscegenation going to end up being a contentious thing?
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: Like I just. But at the same time, yeah. Like
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: looking at the world around us where it's like, well,
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: we can afford to have an army that just fucks
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: with people or we can afford to have a military
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: that just goes into any old nation and messes with
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: any old thing whenever we feel like it because we
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: have lots of money. That's clearly not a better solution
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: than what's being proposed here.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: Right. Is it just like, are they held together through
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: Ruidian and the fact that that's a city with water
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 2: and that becomes like the Aiel home base and where
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: they're stationed out of? And that becomes like almost like
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 2: a Washington, D.C., a nation state that exists to police
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: the rest of the continent.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: Kind of like the Vatican, but it's in the desert.
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: It's completely isolated. I mean, because, yeah, you've got traveling,
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: which really changes your ability to move both people and
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: resources around. for the sake of stuff like this right
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: people don't have to spend years traveling to get to
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: an engagement they can just pop in and pop out
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: they don't have to yet displace an existing population because
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: they do have the waste the ruidian i mean avienda
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: talks about how we can't go back to the waste
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: but like ruidian's still there how is that going to
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: factor in yeah it's there's a lot of questions to
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: be ironed out and i don't know that but like
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: maybe this is the way to do it is to
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: have a continent-wide treaty where like stateless people are the
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: ones that tell the states to knock it off and
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: quit fighting. I don't know. Maybe that's actually a brilliant idea,
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: and I'm just too inculcated in our current world to
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: see how brilliant it is.
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I mean, I don't think Robert Jordan
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 2: or Brandon Sanderson have any better ideas about managing a
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 2: nation state than we do. I think it's a little
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 2: bit of a happily ever after, let's propose something that
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 2: looks like a treaty that could hold up. And create
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: at least, you know, an 80 year period of time
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: of prosperity in the world, even if it's not perfect
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: for everybody, because it's certainly not going to save all
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 2: the women who are collared in the Sean Chan empire
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: by the time we're done with it. You know, it
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: clearly is. We can talk about this period of prosperity. Right.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: That I think he's trying to mirror, which is after
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 2: World War Two. You have this. But like certainly not
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 2: everybody was free. Not everybody. War did not end.
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: Conflict did not stop in that period of time. And
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: so just like how do you deal with that conflict? Well,
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: in this case, you create this Aiel nation state. Yeah.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: But it just, it relies so much on, and then
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: the noble savages will save everyone from their terrible civilized
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: human nature.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: Yes. But in a lot of ways, that is kind
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: of what's been going on with the Aiel the entire time, right?
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's true. It's consistent.
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 2: Our main characters had to go out to the Aiel
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 2: to be taught the ways of a superior people who,
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 2: you know, existed in a more natural state and were
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 2: able to convey that back to our main characters who
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 2: could then take it and take over the world that
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 2: they came from using the philosophy that they were taught
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 2: by these Aiel savages.
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: It is consistent to the books. I will definitely grant
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: you that. It is not a pivot.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 2: LAUGHTER Codswain, for some reason, smells proud of fucking Rand,
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 2: I guess, because he's manipulating people well enough. I don't know.
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 2: That's weird.
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: Well, that's also consistent to how we feel about Codswain.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 2: It's like, what did you do? Nothing. You brought his
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 2: dad in, which could have happened at any time for
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 2: any reason. You didn't need to be that vital, crucial character.
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 2: You made us like you, or try to like you.
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: And so, yeah, they basically... decide to have this massive
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: civilization altering pivot just added on as a sticky note
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: tacked on to this, uh, dragon's piece thing. These poor
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: clerks are trying to come up with this stuff, like
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: as it's all going down, but you know, it's all fine.
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: We're going to, we're going to do that. It's definitely cool.
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 2: And then I think we talked about the next two
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 2: things pretty much. And those shattering of the seals, uh, Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: Then we get through the whole decision about who's going
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: to lead the battle and shattering. So, yeah, we talked
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: about it a lot last chapter because the lead up
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: to that happens. And, you know, in classic Sanderson fashion,
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: he spends a lot of time arguing about things that
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: don't ultimately matter. And in classic spoilers fashion, we're skipping
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: to the important takeaway with a lot of tangents.
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 2: But still, the skipping allows us to tangent. Right. Those
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 2: are two. It's like it's balance. It's all about balance.
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: I also really like how much mom energy Moraine brings
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: to this because Rand and Egwene are fighting over the seals.
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: And then, you know, Moraine lays down what's going to
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: happen and he says, I don't like this, Moraine. Then
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: not much has changed, has it? It's just such a
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: like mom coming in and being like, OK, you kids
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: stop fighting over the toy. It's his turn to play
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: with it. You have to give it up. And then
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: after half an hour, you give it to her. OK, otherwise,
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: neither of you get cookies for dinner. It's so parental.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: Rand, you have to hand over the seals. Egwene, the
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 2: shards are there. The seals will be broken. You have
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 2: to admit you need to break them. And, you know,
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 2: you can decide when, but you're going to have to
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 2: break them. And then they're both kind of go sit
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 2: in there with their heads down. OK, Moraine.
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: We needed her. We needed an adult to your adult
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: at the tent.
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 2: Oh, my God. Yes. And so that sort of ends
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 2: with I'll break them when I feel it must be done.
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 2: She said taking the seals.
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: And Ran's like, well, how are you going to know
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: when I'm going to go for worry about it? And
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: Moran's like, it's going to be fine. The pattern's going
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: to yank it out of your hands. It'll happen when
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: it needs to happen. Like, it's fine. Don't worry about it.
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: Taviran's got you. This is not your wheelhouse anymore. You
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: need to go fight the Dark One.
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 2: And then we get the explainer from Fahil that Ran
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 2: brought everyone who would support him on one side, everyone
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 2: who wouldn't support him on Egwene's side, convinced Egwene, and
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 2: that brought everybody else in the line.
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: Egwene already explained that to us, Sanderson. You didn't have
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: to say it again. You just made Fahil seem like
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: a dumbass for having to tell it to us twice.
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: First of all, you didn't need to explain it any time.
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: We should have been able to put it together ourselves.
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: Did not need to say it twice. And then we
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: get one of my least favorite compromises.
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 2: The Sean Chan one.
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: They can keep who and where they have stolen. The
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: slaves that they've taken can be kept. Might makes right.
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: We will, in fact, negotiate with terrorists.
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 2: Actually, Egwene, I believe, is the one who gets better
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 2: concession out of them. Yeah.
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: I really don't like how much Rand is like, well,
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: it is what it is.
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Like, ugh. Because I believe Egwene gets the concession
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 2: that if they ask to leave, they should be allowed
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 2: to leave. Yeah.
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: Egwene fights for so many cracks, so many concessions, whereas
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: Rand is just like, not my problem. That's a fourth
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: age problem. Egwene is like, definitely my problem right now.
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: I am not going to just put that on a
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: back burner for later. We are going to make some
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: kind of inroad immediately. And then, yeah, Rand says, oh,
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: I'll just destroy them if they don't agree, which is like,
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: first of all, you've threatened that before and it didn't happen.
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: Second of all, it's that's It's just a scary thing
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: when you say that. I'll just destroy them. Like even
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: if you could, that's a scary thing to say. But
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: also every time you've tried, you failed.
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 2: So I'm convinced he could now if he needed to.
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: I think so. But it's still a pretty toothless. It's
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: just a very hollow threat. Totally. Third time's the charm.
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: Just doesn't have the kick that it did before.
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 2: Because, you know, he'll do everything he can not to.
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 2: And then I think that brings us to the end
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 2: of the scene, which is like, I need you to
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 2: do one thing for me before we really get into
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 2: this war. There's a dear friend who needs us, of course,
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 2: referring to Lan.
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, he gets them to settle on a lane
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: and then says, now that we've taken care of all
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: that stuff, can we go help out my bro? I
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: know a guy that needs a slight pick-me-up, just a
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: little backup, touch of wingmanning as he hurtles towards his death.
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so this is Lan in the desperate last... The
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 2: end of the defense of the Gap, right? Because the
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 2: Gap has been sort of this foreshadowed place. I mean,
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 2: ever since the Eye of the World, right? Where Ran
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 2: did his... Talk about closing a loop. Yeah, right? Like,
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 2: this is when Ran, you know, took the power of
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 2: the Eye of the World and killed the Trolloc army
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 2: that was coming down upon the Borderlanders when they were
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 2: assembled to defend the Gap. So, in a lot of ways,
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 2: that was... the first bit of the last battle that
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 2: was like delayed, like that would have been the last battle.
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 2: If the eye of the world hadn't been created, you know,
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 2: to me, that's when that prophecy of we have to
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 2: create it for the greatest need ever. It's like in
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 2: that moment, if the eye of the world didn't exist,
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 2: the borderlands would have been overrun. Last battle would have
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 2: been lost. Rand would have never had a chance to
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 2: become the ruler, the King, the, you know, the visionary
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 2: that he becomes that can fight the dark one. And
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 2: so in that moment, That was the greatest need for
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 2: the world. And that's why it had to be created.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: And also, it simply delayed the inevitable. There was still
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: going to be a massive last battle confrontation at Tarwyn's Gap.
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: All it did was buy two years of time for
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: Rand to get up to speed. The world's greatest need
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: was a two-year delay.
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 2: It probably also killed a fair amount of Trollocs that
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 2: would have been at the last battle, right?
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: The way that the numbers go with all of this,
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: I don't think that matters because we seem to have
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: enough Trollocs for plot reasons.
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 2: It is like, how did they get all those Trollocs
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 2: back in two years? It seems like they bred them
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 2: up real fast. Yeah.
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: So I don't think too hard about the math there.
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: But yeah, we're at that last moment when you think
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: it's all over, right? Where the battle keeps retreating, retreating, retreating.
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: People are wounded. We're figuring out how to make the
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: last stand go right. This is before the breaking light
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: comes through.
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 2: This is half your troops are dead. They've gone down
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 2: from 12000 to 6000.
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: And for these guys, this is the end.
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: This is the end. This is we lost. That's where
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: they're at. They've been fighting for a while already.
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 2: This is kind of like what happened in Kandor. Exactly. Right. Where,
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 2: you know, towers were going to get overrun. They fight
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 2: to the last man. You kill as many as you can.
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 2: So the Southland, you know, the further South has a
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 2: better chance of stopping them. Each layer is trying to
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 2: do as much damage as possible in order to prevent
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 2: the advancement or at least slow the advancement of the
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 2: Trolloc army. Yeah. And that's a noble death, right? Is
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 2: just trying to take out a few more Trollocs on
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 2: your way out is basically what they've determined is like,
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 2: If we don't do this, we'll be overrun. And the
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 2: numbers are such that once they get out of the gap,
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 2: we have no chance. So let's hit them from the side, unsuspected.
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: So yeah, we've lost one of our friends. So Nazar's dead,
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: Andir's dying, and Lan has the very nice admission that
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: what I wished to stop people. from coming with him
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: what i wished was selfish i came to die for
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: malkir i have no right to deny that privilege to
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: others it's nice to see him still working through that
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: of like oh the golden crane rises again you can
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: be a hero too i'm not the only one who
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: has to die for my nation like all of that
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: you know he's processing that and living it and being
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: it as a commander which is nice.
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 2: You know it's when you're saving the world it's everybody's world.
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: Right oh yeah fuji totally Totally. Fujiro, it fits kind
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: of close to home since the entire purpose of the
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: Finnish military is to make it as costly as possible
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: for Russia to attack. Yeah, that's definitely. And really, if
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: you think about that's also the eye of the world, right?
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: That's what they say about the eye of the world
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: is that like everyone who made it died to make
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: it pure. They specifically went into making the eye of
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: the world knowing it would cost their lives because it
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: was worth it to buy that advantage for others. It's
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: a wild thing to wrap one's head around that. simply
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: making it too expensive to continue forward. is, yeah, a
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: valid way to fight in a battle. In case they
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: had the world people there across thousands of years.
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 2: The charge sort of syncs up with this poem. I'm
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 2: not sure where the poem comes from. Oh, okay, he
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 2: says it later. It's the oath a Malkir soldier takes
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 2: during their first posting to the border.
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: But he never got posted to the border because, you know,
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: Malkir fell before he could get posted.
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 2: Is that the same oath that the kid takes at
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 2: the beginning of Towers of Midnight before it gets overrun
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 2: with Trollocs?
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: No, but it's very similar. Because this oath specifically talks
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: about defending the Seven Towers, right? It's specific to Malkir,
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: but it has a very similar cadence and solemnity and
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: rhythm to it. Like, clearly all the Borderlanders have something
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: that fits that poetic form. Maybe not literally a poetic form,
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: but it fits that energy. But it's, you know, tweaked
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: per nation.
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 2: So, do you want to read it?
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: My arm will be the sword, my breast itself a shield,
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: to defend the seven towers, to hold back the darkness.
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: I will stand when all others fall. Ugh.
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why I wanted you to read it.
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: I'm like, Al-Chilodara Malkir, from My Sweet Land Malkir. Sweet
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: home Malkiana.
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 2: Because I'm coming home to you. I mean, they're both
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 2: swampy pits of hell. So I suppose that works. Sorry,
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 2: I don't like the humidity in the south.
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: Does anybody?
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 2: And then, yeah, so they're in the middle of this
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 2: last charge. Everybody's going to die preparing for the last moments.
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 2: And then on your left.
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: Right. This great final line. We've already moved the mountain.
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: Let's budge this feather and be through it.
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 2: You know, and he charges forward the golden crane, and
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 2: then the air ahead to the left split with a
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 2: sudden vertical shaft.
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: To the left.
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 2: A gateway three dozen paces wide. That's so funny. It's
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 2: just exactly like the way Endgame and this is mirrored is,
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 2: you know. And since this obviously came first.
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, it is a 50-50 chance which side the
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: gateway is going to show up on.
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 2: But it's on the left.
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: But it is on the left.
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 2: And so, yeah, you get these, the charging armies of Saldea, Shinar, Kandor,
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 2: basically all the borderlanders have come to rescue Lan, it
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 2: seems like. Yeah.
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: Him and his beleaguered 6,000 who don't even have the
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: energy for a final speech and cheer cycle. They're just
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: going to, like, dead-facedly grind their way into this meat grinder.
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: And then suddenly they just have bright, clean, colorful, armored, rested, fed.
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 2: 20 times your numbers, essentially.
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it goes from 6,000 to 100,000 in what, 45
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: seconds or so?
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 2: Right. Just like, boom. So I'm rewatching Star Wars just
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 2: for fun, because why not? The first three movies and
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 2: episode four, five, six. And there's that scene where Han is,
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 2: you know, running, shoots, surprises a bunch of stormtroopers and
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 2: shoots and they go running away and he's chasing them.
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 2: And then they run into an open field and there's
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 2: just like, 300 fucking stormtroopers ready to shoot back at
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 2: him and he turns around and runs the other way.
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 2: That's what I imagine the Trolloc's reaction basically was. It's
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 2: like they see a small group, they're chasing them, and
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 2: then they just run out and there's this massive, massive
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 2: meat grinder that they're running into all of a sudden.
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 2: Not to mention the Ashaman kind of don't give him
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 2: a chance to turn around. Right.
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: That's the thing, right? Is that he hears the thunder
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: of the cavalry and he sees his own force multiplied.
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: And then it's like, oh no, no, we're more than
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: just horses with armored men on them. We've got Ashaman
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: at full throated roar.
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 2: There's a whole other army there. Yeah. This isn't just
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 2: one army. This is two armies attacking. Yeah.
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: Totally. And it's just such a glorious victory. Ever since
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: Nynaeve dropped him off at the coast and went off
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: to rally the borderlanders, this moment has been coming, right? Like, Yes,
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: Rand is really hugely figures into it. But the emotional
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: impact of this is what was set up when Nynaeve
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: was like, fuck you trying to do this by yourself.
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: I'm going to get you an army. This is the
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: full conclusion of that. Because she was dragging Rand by
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: the hair to get him to agree to this, right?
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Nynaeve set this up entirely. She's the one creating
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 2: the on the left moment is Nynaeve forcing Rand to
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 2: go rescue Lan.
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: Ever since she dropped him off at the coast and
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: was like, remember your oath because I surely will. Will
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: he ride alone? The answer is no, absolutely not. And yeah,
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: the emotional resonance of this scene was just like, okay,
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: there's hope for us, right? Because that's what this is.
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: This is the moment where you go, there's no hope
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: to there is hope, right? If Lan is hopeless, if
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: Lan is accepting his guilt, if Lan is accepting his burden,
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: if Lan is finally allowing people to die with him,
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: you know, This is the end. And then you get
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: this beautiful... Maybe it's not the end, actually. And I'm
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: fine just headcanoning that Endgame specifically ripped this off from Watt.
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 2: I'm super fine with that. Some writer knew.
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: 100%.
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 2: And so, yeah. Andeer is all attacking. He's like, you idiot,
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 2: you're wounded. There's plenty of people fighting. Get the fuck back.
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: And then Andeer's like, then fucking crack a smile for
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: once in your goddamn life. I want you to smile
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: and land... doesn't just smile he laughs and andy was
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: like okay well in that case i will go seek
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: medical attention oh it's funny.
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 2: It's good and this joe pill is named for joe
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 2: phillips a fan of the wheel of.
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: Time joe phil literally joe phil and.
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 2: He's the joe phil land called raise my banner high
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 2: malkier lives on this.
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: Day Also, notice before, Jophiel is his fifth standard bearer
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: since noon.
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: He doesn't die. Despite being a fan insert, he manages
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: to not die.
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 2: This one lives.
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: He manages to live for at least the rest of
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: the day. Oh, wow. Apparently at Malkyrie Con, there was
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: a charades reenactment of land meeting Bulan, and it turned
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: into a con long congo line. Conga line.
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 2: Fantastic.
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: Fantastic. I love this fandom. We're so silly.
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 2: A con go line. Yeah.
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: And yeah, Malkir lives on this day as Malkiri Khan
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: lived on this year. And with that, we did it.
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the end of that little scene. The sort
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 2: of unification of the side of the light in order
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 2: to fight. We've still got the scene where Rand has
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 2: to bring the Sean Chan into it. And that's where
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 2: he kneels to the Crystal Throne. And does that thing
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 2: where he's like, okay, let me kneel. Technically, okay, there.
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 2: I knelt. Deal with it. Your prophecy is fulfilled. What
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 2: the fuck are you going to do now, bitch? I
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 2: really do feel like he kind of is like, I
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 2: understand prophecy. I understand you're bound by it. I will
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 2: do the thing that will technically fulfill your prophecy. And
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 2: we'll move on from there.
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a lot less satisfying than the student becoming
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: the master of rescue with Rand coming to Rand's rescue
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: after Rand came to Rand's rescue back in Eye of
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: the World. Again, the full circle-ness of it. Rand has
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: always been the most stoic and unkillable of warriors, and
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: now he needs Rand to save him. That's way more
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: satisfying than him playing mind games with the Shan-Chan. This
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: is a much more concluding level of bringing all the
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: forces together. Like, yeah, we need the Shan-Chan, but they're
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: a weird addendum compared to circling back around to Lan
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: of all people.
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 2: Right, right. And they're bringing together everybody to rescue Lan.
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: I mean, what a great mission for Rand to show
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: off how much he understands the point of protecting your
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: friends than to have him bring the army to save
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: Moraine's warder and Nynaeve's husband, right? Like, this is the
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: ultimate dad figure you need to save, even more so
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: than Tam.
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 2: And to smash one of the Trolloc armies. Like, really,
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 2: this is the moment to really, you know, smash one
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 2: of these armies so you don't have to worry about
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 2: them as much coming through the the gap it's.
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: A big bite out of the forces that you're going
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: to be throwing you know old men and children at
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: right these is an army of military aged men with
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: the gear and the training you want to use them
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: to take out as much of the army before you're
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: like hey children with pitchforks please hold the line Yeah.
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 2: Fuji says the bit about kneeling to the crystal throne
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 2: is from issues hand. Cause we have those alternate prophecies
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 2: of the dragon over in.
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's my head cannon too. For sure.
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: We know that he got into their prophecies and messed
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: with it. And yeah, the way that ran just mind
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: games around it. I'm like, yeah, no, that's not true prophecy.
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: That's bullshit. I think it's just head cannon. I don't
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: think there's any true confirmation of it, but also I
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: feel like it's pretty well spelled out on the page.
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 2: Agreed. Cause it's also my head cannon. I.
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: Anyone who says that's not your headcanon, I would love
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: to hear an argument because I don't think you can
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: convince me. But I'm curious to hear an attempt.
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 2: What's that meme?
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: I'm not that kind of asshole. Change my mind. I'm
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: not that guy. But yeah, I can't imagine that that's...
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: Because otherwise the idea that prophecy is that easy to
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: play around real prophecy is just like that cheapens every
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: other prophecy that we've enjoyed in these books, you know?
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: But is she getting in there and making it messy?
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: That fits. That totally fits.
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 2: Cause yeah, I feel like there's, there's, there's definitely the,
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 2: there's even a name for it. The Kriathon cycle on
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 2: the Sean Chan side. And it just, it has a
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 2: bunch of different stuff in it.
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: Oh, the versions over here are corrupted. Yeah.
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 2: It's like, no, no, the versions over there are corrupted.
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, honestly, I think that the versions over here on,
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: on the Randland side are, at least have some misinformation
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: just from translation errors and missing context. Like, I don't
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: think either side has truly the best picture, but it
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: does seem like the Sean Chan one was more directly
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: disinformationed into.
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 2: Maybe. Agreed.
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: Maybe this is my Eurocentric bias.
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 2: Who can say?
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to the Wheel of Time Spoilers Podcast.
• 1:29:22
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• 1:29:25
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• 1:29:30
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• 1:29:33
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